I cite only for memory the “declaration by Pery
Broad”, published by the PMO in “Auschwitz seen by the
SS” Historically, this account is not exploitable in its
present version despite its “true” and all too
“striking”, atmosphere, since it has been rewritten by and for the
Poles and diffused exclusively by them. Document NI 11397 of 14/12/45 gives
only a fleeting impression of the exact tone that this “declaration”
must have had. As for his famous account of 13/6/45 given to the British
Intelligence Service and which really served as a basis for the Polish
“declaration”, the chief archivist assured me that the PMO did not
possess the original, which was thought to be in England. Having never seen
even a photocopy of the initial account of 13/6/45, I wonder what German
“original”, was used by the translator Helena Dziedzinska, as the
Museum has not kept it. Furthermore, I fear that Pery Broad. even in his
original account, was but a poor observer of the extermination installations.
He describes Bunkers 1 and 2 thus:

"Not far from Birkenau, which was rapidly
expanding, there were was two neat and pretty peasant cottages built on a
pleasant site. Separated by a copse, they were whitewashed and covered with
nice thatched roofs . All around there were fruit
trees. ”

There is an error in this text: the copse is a veritable
forest, 800 meters across. Broad's testimony is above all a chronical of a few
striking events at the camp, incapable of providing precise details about the
Bunkers and Krematorien. After assessing its reliability, no consciencious
historian will be able to use it unless and until the "declaration" has been
stripped of the Polish influence, or in other words until the original is
published.

III/ The testimony of Maurice BENROUBI
concerning Bunker 1

Born on 27th December 1914 in Salonika, Greece, arrested in
Le Mans on 16th July 1942, deported from Angers on 20th July 1942 by French
convoy No. 8 (see “Le Mémorial de la deportation des juifs de
France” [Memorial of the deportation of Jews from France]) arrived
at Auschwitz Biekenau on Thursday, 23rd July 1942, registered under the number
51,059 and evacuated from the Jawischowitz camp on 17th January 1945.

Historical note

Mr. Maurice Benroubi, prisoner 51.059,
was incorporated without knowing it in a group that might be called the "grave
digger commando". In order to go to his work, he passed through entrance gate
of Birkenau I, took a northwesterly direction, crossed the future Birkenau II,
practically at the place where Krematorien IV and V were to be built, entered
the forest and finally reached the Bunker 1 graves located in the heart of the
Birkenwald [Birch Wood].

The operations of gassing and burying were
kept strictly separate, as decided by the SS in charge according to their own
criteria. In 1942, cremation of the victims was not yet practised one large
scale, due to he the a lack of resources, although the SS had started to
seriously study this question (cf. the project of 21/8/42 proposed by Topf and
Sons for the rapid construction of cremation furnaces near the "special action
bathing installations", the official designation of Bunkers 1 and 2).

The corpses of those gassed were loaded onto wooden platforms 2 meters
by 3, fixed on wagon chassis. About 20 of these corpse transport wagons ran on
narrow gauge rails from Bunker 1 to the west into the Birch Wood. After 300 to
400 meters, the rails emerged into a huge clearing where the mass graves were
dug. The dimensions were 20 x 3 x 2.5 meters and there were apparently between
a few dozen and a hundred of them, in which the victims were laid head to foot,
without any disinfecting product such as slaked lime being used. The full
graves were covered with a thin layer of earth and left like that. According to
Mr. Benroubi, no particular odor was perceptible either at the graves or at the
two gas chambers of Bunker 1. The filth in which the prisoners lived — 40
days without a shower in the case of Mr.Benroubi— no doubt explains this
lack of sensitivity to the smell. However, Himmler’s inspection visit to
Birkenrau in July 1942, triggered a “study” visit by Camp Commandant
Hoess, accompanied by Second Lieutenants Hössel and Dejaco to learn about
the art of cremating at the Chelmno [Kulmhof] center on the Ner on 16/9/42. The
result was that in November 1942, all the Birkenau graves were emptied and the
human remains, some of them in an advanced stage of decomposition, were burnt.
Between its creation and that date, the Birkenau camp had already coal 107,000
lives, taking all origins and causes of death together, as noted by commandant
Hoess in his autobiography.

Transport from the “Jewish ramp”
of Auschwitz station to Bunkers 1 and 2 after the “selection” , a
practice that commenced in July 1942, was by truck.

There are no ruins
of Bunker 1, which was demolished at the end of 1942 or in early 1943. The
information that has reached us on this provisional installation is scanty and
based only on the testimonies of the few survivors. The rooms of an ordinary
farmhouse were turned into gas chambers by roughly sealing the windows, fitting
gas tight doors and making small apertures filled with shutters in the wall
alongside these doors at about head height. Through these the Zyklon B was
introduced.

According to several witnesses at the Dejaco and Ertl trial
in Vienna in 1972, the Bauleitung produced no architectural drawings for this
installation. Only Hoess seems to have made one, drawn by himself and in
secret. In his autobiography ["Commandant of Auschwitz", pages
207 8], he recounts that together with Eichmann at beginning of September
1941

“We inspected the area in order to find a
likely spot . We decided that a peasant farmstead, situated in the north-west
corner of what later became the third building sector at Birkenau would be the
most suitable [for extermination by gassing]. It was isolated and screened by
woods and hedges, and it was also not far from the railway. The bodies could be
placed in long, deep pits dug in the nearby meadows. We had not at that time
thought of burning the corpses. We calculated that after gas-proofing the
premises then available, it would be possible to kill about 800 people
simultaneously with a suitable gas. These figures were borne out later in
practice…”

he then goes on to say:

“A few days later I sent to the
Reichsführer SS by courier a detailed location plan and description of
the installation [Bunker 1]. I have never received an acknowledgement or a
decision on my report. Eichmann told me later that the Reichsführer SS was
in agreement with my proposals.”

This correspondence has not been found to date.

Himmler’s late and indirect response was purely one of form. His real
answer to Hoess, one month after the letter had sent his plan, was the arrival
of SS Hauptsturmführer [Captain] Bischoff to head the Auschwitz
Bauleitung. Himmler, while he had been correct in his assessment of Hoess’
capacity to successfully develop the “special activity” of Auschwitz,
had no illusions on certain of his “protégé’s”
qualities. Eichmann confirms this in his memoirs dictated to the journalist
Sassen in Buenos Aires in 1957:

“in general, Hoess was certainly too limited
to be able to control all the complexity of Auschwitz, but for that he had a
complete general staff.”

MAURICE BENROUBI'S TESTIMONY:

“We left the camp. We passed through small
clearings, a little wood. About every 300 meters there was a watch tower.

Suddenly, a deportee left the ranks and started running in the
direction of the camp shouting ‘Nein, nein / no no, I want to go back to
the camp.’ We stopped, an SS man shouted to him to come back. He did not
obey, the SS shot him. Four deportees went to fetch him. Three hundred meters
further on, another deportee did exactly the same as the first. I could not
understand a thing ... [it should be pointed out that Mr. Benroubi at the time
of his deportation did not speak or understand German, Yiddish or Polish. He
was familiar with only French, Spanish and Greek He describes himself as
‘a deaf and dumb man in the middle of a fire’. Frequently it was not
until after the event that he realized what had happened.]

…Ten
minutes later, I saw in the distance big heaps of corpses, as if there was a
death factory nearby. As we approached, we could see them better. They were all
mixed up together like wooden dummies Some had their cheeks torn. Their gold
teeth had been extracted. There were women, children, babies.

We
marched 200 meters and stopped in a clearing. Two SS officers were there and
gave orders to the SS men. Further on about one hundred Sonderkommando men were
pushing platforms of 3m by 2m mounted on wheels [along a narrow guage
railway, linking the two gas chambers of Bunker 1 with the first graves if the
Birkenwald] and on these platforms there were corpses lying one on top of the
other They put them in front of graves about 20m long, 3m wide and 2.50m deep.

There were about ten graves ready to receive the martyrs. Parallel to
these open graces there were some that had been covered with earth and these
extended over about 300 meters. It could not have been long since they since
they were covered over. On the earth in places there were trickles of light
colored decomposed fat mixed with blood. After receiving orders, the Capos
split us into groups. Some of our comrades took picks and shovels and jumped
into the graves. As for me, I went with the other comrades to join the
Sonderkommando to transport the corpses like them. The men of the
Sonderkommando received us with stone throwing and called us all sorts of
names. They laughed and amused themselves like criminals, making themselves
accomplices of the SS to please them. Basically, it was that, the nazi regime
... all of a piece.

In this Kommando, the Capos, the SS and the
Sonderkommando all hit us, and threw us on the heaps of bodies to laugh at our
fear The SS fired on us and every day we had to take to assassinated comrades
back to the camp to be counted at the evening roll call.

At midday
the Sonderkommando ate separately and we ate far from them, almost a double
ration and a few potatoes. There was also a distribution of bread from a
convoy, stale and even moldy. Some comrades exchanged non moldy bread for moldy
in order to have a bigger quantity. Little pools of water formed in the graves
and as we were very thirsty, we quickly jumped down and lapped up the water and
climbed out again very fast. We were reduced to the state of animals...

One morning, we had hardly arrived and were getting ready to pick up
the picks and shovels, when an SS who was waiting for us ordered the guards to
keep marching and to follow him. We crossed the entire clearing and took the
track along which the wagons arrived...

We arrived in another clearing.
There were two big concrete blocks [the buildings known at “Bunker
1”] at least 20m wide and perhaps as many long. Near these blocks there
were three mountains of bodies. One of men, one of women and one of children
under ten.

The Sonderkommando men received us as on previous occasions
with stone throwing and abuse. We stopped in front of the big heaps of corpses
and the Capos made us understand that we had to load the corpses on the wagon
platforms and transport them to the empty graves We rushed to the wagons and
started working like mad... for what mattered most was to get away from the gas
chambers...

One morning, the doors of the Bunkers, as they called them,
were open. I noticed that there were showerheads and along the walls clothes
hooks. I remember that a comrade made signs to me to make me understand that we
should never look in that direction, which meant also, ‘if you don't want
to be shot by a sentry, don't look’. In fact I saw that all the comrades
were working with their backs to the Bunkers to avoid giving even the slightest
glance towards the two extermination Bunkers...

One day. arriving at
work, I saw electricians installing lamp posts by the empty graves and fitting
big lamps. I immediately realized that there were also going to be night
shifts...

The same day, 4th September 1942, after the roll call, there
was a “selection” and contrary to what normally happened every time
there was a selection, this time the nazis chose the strongest, the most
healthy.

We waited a good hour before departing. A commrade said to me:
‘What are you doing amongst us? Didn't you hear the order that those who
worked in the Sonderkommando were not to step out of the ranks?’ I was
dumbfounded …